Friday Nights: In Command
When you get seven people in for a game of Commander, it's not going to end quickly.
Vital Statistics
Date: March 8, 2012
Category: Friday Nights
Appearing: Paul Saunders, Graham Stark, Jeremy Petter, James Turner, Kathleen De Vere, Matt Wiggins, Alex Steacy
Writing: Graham Stark
Camera: Graham Stark, James Turner, Paul Saunders
Edited by: Graham Stark
Music: Bradley Rains
Synopsis
The crew play Commander, and try to escape with friendships intact.
Each player uses a deck that coincides with their respective personae in the Friday Nights canon:
- Graham usually defaults to green; his elf-themed deck is titled "Seriously, Guys, Look At All These Friggin' Elves".
- Kathleen is a cat enthusiast, and so plays a deck named "Paws of Fury" that is almost entirely made of cats.
- James is not shown playing the game much in Friday Nights and does not have an established play style; his commander deck is a vampire-themed deck named "Bury, Suck, Kill".
- Alex typically plays red or black; his commander deck is a vampire-themed deck named "I Ain't Sayin' She's a Grave Digger, but She Certainly Pulls Creatures Out of the Graveyard with Startling Efficiency" (a reference to the song "Gold Digger" by Kanye West).
- Paul, whose introduction to the game is the primary arc of the first four Friday Nights episodes, is depicted as a very scientific deck builder who constructs by creating dozens of variations on the same deck and testing them all; having not had time to do this for the commander game, he simply purchases a preconstructed Commander deck.
- Matt is depicted as a huge fan of angels, basing all of his decks around them; he has named his commander deck "Flight of the Valkyries" (an intentional misquote of Richard Wagner's famous piece "Ride of the Valkyries").
- Jer bases his decks on complex, delicate combos; he has named his deck "Everybody Wins!", being deliberately vague about what this signifies.
Graham is the first to lose when Kathleen wipes out his relatively weak creatures and then finishes him with a large cavalcade of cat tokens. Paul, concerned about Kathleen's growing cat army, suggests that either Alex or Matt pair with him to defeat her; after the two launch mudslinging campaigns against one another, both claiming that the other will betray Paul after Kathleen's demise more quickly. Paul sides with Matt. Matt immediately turns on Paul, taking out both him and Kathleen in a single turn. Alex proceeds to ruin himself with a card that requires him to sacrifice his own life. Jer attempts to make himself invulnerable with a pair of enchantments; however, Matt circumvents his efforts by destroying one of them, killing him. This leaves Matt and James remaining, with Matt well-protected by an army of angels and 187 life while James, who has been playing defensively all evening, has a single creature and 6 life. Confident in his victory, Matt begins to taunt James, who calmly and efficiently wipes out Matt's angels, reduces his life total to 10, and then destroys him in a single turn. While Kathleen and Graham celebrate James' victory, Matt attempts and fails to flip the table in his rage, prompting Alex to bring out a smaller and lighter table for him.
Trivia
- The LRR crew do play the commander format often, but the decks in this video are fictional. Nods to their real playstyles include:
- Matt's use of angels
- Kathleen's use of cats
- The name "Bury, Suck, Kill" for a vampire deck (played by Kathleen)
- The text in the smear posters is as follows:
- Matt speaks only in life gain. VOTE ALEX.
- Keep ALEX out of YOUR graveyard! VOTE FOR MATT.
